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Toxic Avenger

Last night, around 11 o’clock, I realized I hadn’t watched a movie by myself in a long time. So, looking through my DVDs, [and trust me, there’s a lot of them] I couldn’t help but grab the case for one of my favorite ‘bad movies’ of all time: THE TOXIC AVENGER. it’s obscure, it has sex/nudity, it’s fucking violent, and it’s terrible. really terrible — which may explain why I have an eternal love for it.

The story is about a little nerd called Melvin — he is like most ‘nerds’ in film: he has absolutely no friends, he likes the popular girl [who obviously has a big, buff boyfriend], and is constantly bullied by the cool kids. When the ‘popular kids’ play a prank on Melvin, and it goes one step too far, Melvin falls into a bucket of toxic waste [head first, none the less!] and becomes none other than Toxie: The Toxic Avenger!

The Toxic Avenger came out in 1984, and gained itself a huge cult following: with three sequels, a kid’s cartoon, [with four new ‘toxic heroes’ calling themselves “The Toxic Crusaders”] action figures, a musical and – naturally – a remake on the way. There was even a line of comic books that MARVEL released based on Toxie!

It’s films that do this well that make me glad to be a cinephile – I mean, just look at ALLThe Toxic Avenger‘s fans, it’s merchandise, [I can only imagine the price on that comic book!] and it’s stage adaptation [I can’t help but wonder how that would translate onto stage – with musical numbers!] It makes me wonder if it was really a ‘bad movie’ in the first place – surely it couldn’t have been that bad if it gets this much love!

So if you haven’t seen this gem of a film, I most certainly recommend it: even with it’s quirks and ultra-violence, it sits proudly on my DVD shelf. Just be wary of the gore content: there’s a particular scene that was considered ‘too gruesome’ for film [it involves a car and a kid’s head..enough said]

Join me on my next post, which will be about my other interest in life: [besides movies]VIDEO GAMES.